A senior Government official has refused to give the names of mystery backers behind a bid to create a new city academy in Bradford.

Bradford councillors claim they are being kept in the dark over plans to close struggling Rhodesway School in Allerton, and replace it with a privately-sponsored academy.

It was revealed at a Council committee meeting last night that Bradford University has held talks with the Government about becoming involved in the running of the new school.

City academies are built to replace struggling schools and are taken out of local education authority control and run by a sponsor which can create its own curriculum, ethos and admissions policy.

The newly-formed British Edu Trust Foundation, chaired by Lord Bhatia, has agreed to invest £2 million sponsoring the Rhodesway project.

But an official at the Department for Education and Skills yesterday refused to tell councillors the names of any other businessmen involved. The Government sparked outrage last week by suddenly announcing that it planned to replace Rhodesway School with a non-faith based academy by 2008 before Bradford councillors or teachers at the school had been told.

At a Council education scrutiny meeting last night, Paul Litchfield, the DfES project leader for creating city academies in Bradford, apologised to the Council for the "anguish" the announcement had caused.

But he refused to reveal the identities of the other businessmen involved in the plan. He also declined to say which other schools in the district had been identified as potential city academies and he left the meeting before councillors had made any recommendations.

It was revealed last year that the Council had submitted an expression of interest to the DfES for Rhodesway School, which has been in special measures since 2002, to become an academy.

But the Council's assistant chief executive Mark Carriline told the meeting the authority had only found out about the Government's announcement last week an hour before it was made. Mr Carriline said both he and the Council's director of education, Phil Green, had met the DfES academies division only four days before the Government announced its plan for Rhodesway, when they were told more work needed to be done to identify a sponsor for the project.

The Government aims to create 200 city academies by 2010 and its plans for Rhodesway were announced as part of a release marking the first 100 academy projects which were underway.

Mike Pollard, a parent governor representative on the committee, asked if the Government had announced the plans to turn Rhodesway School into an academy because of "a spin doctor's deadline".

And committee chairman, Councillor Phil Thornton, complained that councillors were being kept in the dark over plans for city academies by Council and DfES officials.

The committee has called on Lord Bhatia and members of the British Edu Trust Foundation to attend a public meeting in Bradford to outline their plans and it also asked Mr Carriline to produce a report on Bradford Council's policy on the creation of city academies.